ROACH HOOK SSHORT SHANKS. 487 



be of the Carlisle or round bend. No other hook admits 

 of putting on a worm so well, neatly, or quickly. 



I now come to roach hooks, and probably more thought 

 and care have been bestowed on them than upon all the 

 others put together ; and yet many of the patterns are not 

 only bad, but execrable. As a rule, the shanks are almost 

 always too short to strike properly. Take an ordinary 

 short-shanked roach hook, just fix the point in a stout 

 piece of paper, pull the gut gently, and see what ensues, and 

 the position the hook takes. The shank of the hook and 

 the gut will form a small obtuse angle; in some cases, 

 almost a right angle. The whole strain falls on the inside 

 of the point instead of directly on the point ; you may pull, 

 but the effect is not to force the point in, but to tear the 

 hook open. Consequently, with such a hook, when the 

 short sharp stroke peculiar to roach-fishing is given, the 

 hook springs instead of burying the point and barb, unless 

 the wire of the hook . be so coarse and unyielding as to 

 refuse to spring, when a much harder stroke than would 

 be necessary if the hook were of the proper shape may 

 perhaps effect the object. But it has been the practice of 

 roach-fishers to discard hooks of coarse wire and to insist 

 upon having a hook with a very fine wire, in order that 

 the gentle or maggot which so many use for a bait may be 

 threaded on the hook with the least possible damage, and 

 the consequence of this has been that anglers have con- 

 sidered the bait more than the hook, and consequently 

 they have been using the very worst possible hook they 

 could adopt for their purpose very short in the shank, 

 round and broad in the bend, with (if anything) an out- 

 turned point instead of an in-turned one, and fine in the 

 wire so as to spring rather than penetrate, consequently 

 the point only gets fixed, the fish gives a turn over, or 

 comes half-way home, and gets off; and when this occurs 

 often it spoils sport, as it by no means improves a roach 



